Matria, so intimate and personal. It hurts to know who is Antolín. This is Mexico, and the elite that leads our country.Felipe Ehrenberg
Neologist

Like the time, and I find compelling from beginning to end.Carlos Reygadas
Filmaker

An irreverent, courageous and moving portrait.Martha Sosa
Film producer

It's an explosion of findings on several levels. I have always enjoyed the stories of family hidden past to be revealing, and discover not only your grandfather, but an incarnation of the twentieth century Mexican political system. What a gem. I never imagined that it had so many political implications, as symptom of the excesses of our(s) party(s). It is redundant to tell you that your grandfather is a great character. It's equally interesting the story of pain and family concealment, and its implications.Fernanda Solorzano
Cinema Critic

Exploring two universes, the personal and the recent history of our country, is a great challenge and achievement of Matria, the cinematographic project, in which Fernando Llanos, better known for his plastic and visual work than his cinematographic career, entrains the spectator to unravel the past of his family, while he reveals us aspects that are little-know, but always indispensable for learning and reflecting our history. It is undoubtedly a work that merits further consideration and that seems to set the starting point of a promising trajectory of this talented Mexican artist in search of new discourses and narratives. Inti Cordera
Director and producer of documentaries, founder of DOCSDF

The powerful historical plot of "Matria" is balanced by an emotional and impressive family story that takes us in one breath to the end, absorbed and eager to learn more. The inevitable first instinct is to condemn the grandfather as a politician and as a family man, especially because his own children are the ones who render a judgement upon him with their attitudes and feelings: likewise admiration and embarrassment and, above all, the painful desire of being loved. It is terribly unfair to judge someone under the parameters of another era. Therefore I propose another than the prevailing view of this alleged condemnation. This could be the portrait of a brave man because he fought a bloody war and was rewarded for risking his life; a man who was intelligent and ambitious to forge his legacy, conscientious and responsible because he never abandoned any of his two families... and probably imperfect. After all, the main quality of Matria is that it doesn't deal only with another man, another time, another grandfather, the history of another country, but concerns each one of us. Family history influencing important decisions in life: Who can deny that this conception occasionally crosses his mind? I write these lines with an eye toward my great-grandmother Maria (1853-1945), whose biography can only be traced back to the year 1886, when she appeared as a wealthy widow with three children in a small Spanish town. The same time a military pastor was removed to that very town. We need to know where we come from and, most importantly, where we are going to and whom we love in order to build our own legacy. Laura Baigorri
Curator and lecturer